Innovation Labs

I pitch therefore I am

By now we are probably all convinced of the value of the pitching approach in really helping to define what your product is, what problem it addresses, who it is for, how it works, why the BBC should care, and so on, and so forth. Hopefully your project ideas are starting to coalesce somewhat by now, but if you are anything like us your idea now may be significantly different from the start of the week. We are quite excited by our project, but we are increasingly aware that we only have a limited time in the final pitch to explain what our idea is, why it is cool and why you (and the BBC) should care.

What we have noticed is that our pitching technique leaves a little to be desired in terms of clarity, focus, and punch. The current headshift strategy seems to be to stand either side of a flip chart and babble rapidly and excitedly about our project until we are asked to stop. This obviously will not do. With this in mind, we figured we might want to look into resources on the 'art of the pitch' via the magical intarwebs. And because we are 'social software' geeks and love to SHARE, here's what we have found so far:

• Presentation Zen - a Presentation/pitching blog
• Guy Kawasaki's Blog (former Apple evangelist and Presentation guru, apparently)
• Guy Kawasaki's "Art of the Pitch" MP3 (7MB; from his "Art of the Start" book)
• Garr Reynolds Presentation Tips

Guy K. believes that you shouldn't try to make more than 10 key points in any pitch (since normal humans can't keep track of more than about 10 concepts in a meeting), that you should hone your pitch by repeatedly delivering it until you know it inside out (about 25 iterations, he recommends), and that you keep your slides simple, preferably one word per slide, in a big-ass font. All seem like solid recommendations to us. Keep it simple, keep it focused, keep it short.

We are thus sadly abandoning our plan to present our pitch in a perfect recreation of the Spread Eagle built within the Second Life game, wherein we would pitch with avatars in the form of a giant Knight in shining armour with a cuckoo clock for a head (Al) and the ghost of a small boy (Rik). It would have been cool.

I PITCH, therefore I am.

tag tag tag tag tag...

Mid way

Wednesday morning and we're in full swing. Our concept now bears no resemablence to the description posted under Ymogen on the labs site but we're happy with the direction that it's going. As you will see in other posts, we've been forced to focus on the end user and move away from the generic "wouldn't it be great if people (unknown) could wander around accessing content that was tagged in space".

This morning, Matt is telling us about the BBC objectives which I hope will prove useful information to people following in future labs or hoping to develop content for the BBC. Generally the BBC must provide "public value".
Public value is driven via 5 metrics:
* Democratic (active citizenship)
* Cultural (celebrating and supporting best talent in media - drama etc)
* Educational (formal and informat learning, springwatch)
* Community (discuss issues that are geographic and interest based)
* Global (world service and global value. recognising the huge cultural diversity of the BBC)

Priorities for new media development are:
On demand (imp, mybbcplayer, e.g. BBC2 online),
Navigation (autonomy for search but new ways of searching are important. e.g. Stapler which uses semacodes), Engagement (moving from passive to active engagement, how do we drive engagement with BBC sites).
e.g. Action network.

BBC uses software including DNA, Creative Archive and it's worth looking at these to understand how the BBC works.

Finally, Ubiquity is critical. Make it work across devices so that as many people as possible can use them. For example, bbc.co.uk/mobile

Your concept needs to address fit with the public values and will undergo a public value test. I.e. If it's all about making money, it's not likely to be a BBC thing.